After a hard-fought campaign this spring in the Illinois Legislature to allow the sale of recreational marijuana, cities across the state are trying to stifle the potentially lucrative business before it launches in January.
Next year, Illinois will become the 11th state to fully legalize pot as part of a new law that also scrubbed criminal records for low-level drug offenses. But city officials and concerned residents are citing a litany of concerns — some of them supported by scant evidence — to thwart dispensaries from opening. They worry kids will have greater access to marijuana, that it’s a gateway to other drugs and that police won’t be able to tell whether drivers are too high to be on the road.
City council hearings across the state have sometimes turned into raucous debates about the country’s rapidly growing legalization movement, and places like Marion, Ill., want to minimize the potential fallout of permitting anyone over the age of 21 to buy weed within their borders.
“This is not Nevada,” Marion Mayor Mike Absher said. The City Council of the downstate town, with a population of 17,000, voted to opt out, he said, because they first wanted to “see what happens to communities in our backyard.”